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Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Before you read this I want you to know that I did not write this to insult either you or those who believe in you but because this is how I feel personally. I wrote this based on a flare of anger, frustration and sadness – a moment derived from a sense of injustice and unfairness, a sense of sadness and confusion about things that were happening in the world, to those both near and far. Things that shouldn’t be happening. Not in a world that so many people believe was created by an all-loving, all-caring God; you.

Over the last few weeks I have seen, thrown across my television and cinema screen, and plastered up the walls in the underground as I ascend the escalator, pictures of people. Children, mothers, fathers, cousins, aunts, grandparents. People no more deserving of what they got than anyone else on this world you created. People sitting in the streets where once their house stood, siblings huddled together, protecting each other from any more loss. More loss on top of the 7,000+ people killed in Nepal. Do you think that is ok? Do you think it is fair? I don’t. Yet for you it is ok. Because, despite all this pain and suffering, when that one family discover their children did survive, or that their lives aren’t completely lost, you’ll still be thanked. Thank you Lord for protecting my child from this devastating thing that you yourself allowed to happen!? Is this fair? Well? I think not.

I could go on forever listing the things in this world that shouldn’t happen. The things that exist in this wonderful place that you created for us that Just. Shouldn’t. Be. Only a week or so ago one of my oldest friends lost their dad. A fit and healthy man who has never lived any other way. That is, until something you must have allowed to exist took him. A wife lost her husband, a mother lost her son, two brothers lost their brother, nephews and nieces lost their uncle and two girls lost their dad. Why? Cancer. A disease that can, and does, take anyone it wants. The most selfish and greedy thing on this earth and seemingly beyond anyone’s control. You allowed this to exist and to take innocent people away from those who loved them and yet when friends and family come together to say their final goodbyes, what do you get? Praise and thanks that that person, that friend or relative, is finally safe. Free from pain and in your loving care.

It sounds lovely doesn’t it? How kind you are to be looking after these wonderful, beautiful people up in your safe heavenly heaven. Yet where were you when that 56 year old, fit and healthy, happy family man was diagnosed with cancer and told it was terminal? Where were you, when in the last year or so, my mum lost one of her oldest school friends, a friend lost her last remaining son and hundreds of people packed into a church had to say goodbye to someone way before their time?

Yet we’ll still sing. We’ll stand in that church, dressed in black to sing about the beauty you created. How all things bright and beautiful were created by you. Nobody talks about the darkness: the black and terrible things that you allow to happen or to exist. Standing in that church last week, singing that well-known hymn, beneath the sadness and tears, I could feel anger. Anger that we sing your praises on such a terrible day. A day that shouldn’t be happening in a world “Bright and Beautiful”. So here is my version. The real, down-to-earth, honest version of the world we are part of. The world that you began.

All Things Bright And Dismal Hymn

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

All things rough and difficult,
All times when things get tough
All moments of destruction
The Lord, he made this stuff.

Each volcanic eruption,
Each earthquake through the world,
He let those people suffer,
He let them, young and old.

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all

The purple-headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky;

All things bright and dismal,
All creatures full of hate,
Bitterness and anguish,
God leaves them to their fate.

The murders and the rapings,
The tumors and the deaths,
He watched them as they suffered,
Then took our prayers and left

All things dire and heartless
All creatures mad and cruel
All things weak and powerless
The Lord God made them all

The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows for our play,
The rushes by the water,
To gather every day;

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all

He gave us brains to think with,
And hearts so we may care,
Yet lets these parts be broken,
Ignoring all our prayers.

All things dark and terrible,
All creatures sad and cruel,
All things ill and vulnerable,
The Lord God made them all

Amen

P.S. I was just made aware that a version of this was done in a Monty Python sketch however mine is not just a copy and paste. I have written it from my own ideas and I was going to write it anyway whether a version had been done or not. I hope it is understood by those who share my anger.